Shocking, I know
When the House Judiciary Committee passed a late-term abortion ban in June, Republican leaders scrambled to find a female, media-savvy lawmaker to bring the legislation to the floor. Their biggest problem: Not a single Republican woman was represented among the committee's 23 Republican members. They eventually settled on Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who isn't on the Judiciary Committee.
Democratic women in the House. No comparable image for GOP available.
The episode underscored a growing problem that is worrying Republicans: Women are badly underrepresented within their party in the Congress. Only 8 percent of House Republicans are women, and there are only four female Republican senators. Of the long list of potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, there's not a single woman.
Party leaders want to close the gender gap, but worry that it will be difficult with very few female leaders in Congress to handle outreach.
From a master of the obvious, one of the few GOP women in Congress:
"It's not good enough. It's not. And it's not reflective of the electorate," said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., one of just three Republican women in the freshman class of 2012, who were sworn into the House alongside 17 female Democratic colleagues. "[...] Wagner argues that women bring an important perspective on some of the biggest issues the country is currently dealing with, such as family budgets, health care, entitlements, and energy policy—all things women tend to handle in their households. "We're the ones filling the minivan up," she said.
I'm reminded of Queen Ann trying to convince us that her husband, a male candidate, was the correct women's choice because those economic issues were his
wheelhouse. I guess Republicans aren't buying it either.
In response to the growing criticism, Republican groups are working to improve outreach to female candidates to run for Congress. In June, the National Republican Congressional Committee launched Project GROW (for "Growing Republican Opportunities for Women") to help the party with its messaging to female voters, instruct male candidates and incumbents on how better to connect with women, and to recruit more female candidates to run for Congress.
Please stifle your chortles. Does it need to be said that they should just cease and desist with the war on women?
“Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, the top-ranking Republican woman in the House, was quoted by The Daily Beast last week as saying that Democrats were fabricating the ‘war on women’ to distract from real issues.”
Recently Fox tried to help Conservatives in their effort to
pin the War on Women on Democrats, pointing to some recent examples of sexual harassment by Democrats, totally missing that it's not about personal behavior but about legislation.
The Guttmacher Institute has compiled a report detailing the explosion of legislation at the state level limiting or trying to limit women's reproductive rights.
Are female GOP representatives going to continue the female unfriendly policies of their male counterparts once they're elected? Then what's the point? I sometimes wonder about the mental calculus women do to join or stay in the Republican party. It must involve weighing who they hate more, themselves, or say, lazy people who refuse to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.